Presentation and Professionalism- Module 6

Blogs especially PR blogs are needed to be presented in a professional manner. Looking at a good presentation in public relations, by having a professional and ascetically appealing presentation such as a blog, these are needed as it can help to attract audiences and which ultimately can help you persuade them to believe what is being said or presented (Abdullah 2012). But having a professional presentation doesn’t mean it has to be dull and boring, it should also reflect your personality and also tie in with your knowledge (Felton 2004), as this will also help attract more people as they can connect as a real person and it helps to make the blogs come alive (Fursdon and James 2009).

Image 1: Professional, Blog, Personal

Source: Braid Creative and Consulting (2012)

As shown by CQU (2015) a good professional presentation should include the following:

• Plenty of white space making it easier to read
• The choice of font will also contribute to professionalism
• Overusing colour can become very distracting for the reader
• The use of photos and graphics throughout documents can assist understanding

It is also seen that short, simple titles are usually more effective and also by having references in blogs this helps shows the readers that the information they are reading is accurate and therefore professional (Careerealism 2014).

Taking these points into example looking at my blog it shows plenty of white space as the whole page is white except for the text and pictures, the font is nice and simple and nothing fancy so it’s easy to read, as just stated the only colour used on my blog is in the pictures which is making them pop out and also assisting the understanding of the content itself. So by looking at these it is believed that all of my blog posts are presented professionally.

References:

Abdullah, Z 2012, ‘Improving educational and professional standards of public relations professionalism: Towards a mixed methods research approach’, International Journal Of Multiple Research Approaches, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 109-124.

Braid Creative & Consulting 2012, How To Pepper Business Into Your Personal Blog, viewed 20 May 2015, http://www.braidcreative.com/blog/how-to-pepper-business-into-your-personal-blog

Careerealism 2014, 5 Tips To Create A Great Professional Blog, viewed 20 May 2015, http://www.careerealism.com/creating-professional-blog/

CQ University 2015, Module 6: The public relations campaign – logistics, COMM11110, Introduction to Public Relations, CQUniversity e-courses,https://moodle.cqu.edu.au/course/view.php?id=215

Felton, I 2004, Blogs as Excellent Public Relations Tools, viewed 20 May 2015, http://www.seochat.com/c/a/website-promotion-help/blogs-as-excellent-public-relations-tools/

Fursdon, R & James, M 2009, Why are PR agencies blogging? An exploratory study of the blogging practices of public relations agencies, viewed 20 May 2015, http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/services/Download/uon:11627/ATTACHMENT01?view=true

Persuasion vs Coercion- Module 8

According to Perloff (2003) persuasion is seen to be a process in which the communicator tries to convince other people to change their behaviour or attitudes regarding a certain issue through a certain message. Whereas coercion is where the communicator uses improper use of authority, physical force, economic power and other ways to take advantage of other people so that the communicator gets their way (Business Dictionary 2015).

Image 1: Quote

Source: Zazzle (2015)

For PR professionals the line should be drawn at where the ethical manner/persuasion is about to be crossed, such as any message that is seemed to be forceful or any slight use of coercion as a method of convincing the audience to achieve their goals. PR messages are required to be truthful and honest, it is about building relationships with the public and if the PR professional are using coercion tactics by making the public feel bad, for example by not donating to a cause, this isn’t building a very good relationship with the public and therefore won’t achieve their objectives/goals (Wilcox et al. 2013).

Examples of ethical use of persuasion in PR is that the message should be accurate, complete, the material should be relevant, the information must be truthful and the facts are correct and therefore not being incorrect, misleading, forceful or threatening. Two companies that their PR campaigns do this well are Greenpeace and The Red Cross as they are persuading people to become more aware of the issues and are providing ways to take action or donate money to the causes rather than using tactics and persuasion to make people feel bad for not donating.

References:

Business Dictionary 2014, Coercion, viewed 20 May 2015, http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/coercion.html#ixzz3aepqGnKt

Perloff, R 2003, The Dynamics of Persuasion: Communication and Attitudes in the 21st Century, 2^nd ed., Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, New Jersey, viewed 20 May 2015, http://journalism.uoregon.edu/~tbivins/stratcomweb/readings/persuasion_def.pdf

Wilcox, DL, Cameron, GT, Reber, BH & Shin, JH 2013, Think: Public Relations, Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.

Zazzle 2015, Coercion Gifts and Gift Ideas, viewed 20 May 2015, http://www.zazzle.com.au/coercion+gifts

‘Reliable’, ‘Credible’ ‘Substantiated’ and ‘Accurate’ research in a PR Campaign- Module 3

Obtaining ‘reliable’, ‘credible’, ‘substantiated’ and ‘accurate’ information/ research is important when creating a successful PR campaign. Research is seen to be the beginning of the process that seeks to bring about a specific objective. Research can come in many different forms including organisational material, databases, the internet, content analyses, focus groups, interviews and surveys (Wilcox et al. 2013).

With the internet being such an easy way to access information, this is generally a method that is often used by PR practitioners as you can quickly and easily access information and data about that topic etc. but as easy as it is to access that information it is just as easy to put that information and data online. So how can you decide if that information ‘reliable’, ‘credible’, ‘substantiated’ and ‘accurate’?

Image 1: Quote

Source: Mulroney (2015)

According to Harvard College Writing Program (2015) and University of Wisconsin (2014) to find the most ‘reliable’, ‘credible’, ‘substantiated’ and ‘accurate’ information and data on the internet is by using websites with the authors name/s and qualification/s, the date of when it was published that way you can tell if the resources are up to date, the domain of the website such as .edu and .gov and also the sources on the website such as scholarly articles and books. It is also evident for PR practitioners to stay away from websites such as Wikipedia, personal websites and blogs, as there is a high chance that the information on these websites aren’t always correct.

So if PR practitioners stick to websites with these identification tools on them there is higher chance that the information and data is ‘reliable’, ‘credible’, ‘substantiated’ and ‘accurate’.

References

Harvard College Writing Program 2015, Evaluating Web Sources, viewed 15 April 2015, http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k70847&pageid=icb.page346375

Mulroney, D 2015, Life Hack Quotes, viewed 5 May 2015,  http://quotes.lifehack.org/quote/dermot-mulroney/what-people-actually-refer-to-as-research/

University of Wisconsin 2014, How can I tell if a website is credible?, viewed 5 May 2015, https://uknowit.uwgb.edu/page.php?id=30276

Wilcox, DL, Cameron, GT, Reber, BH & Shin, JH 2013, Think: Public Relations, Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.

The Earliest PR Campaign- Module 2

In the early 1920’s a man called Edward Bernays was approached by a cigarette company to increase their sales of their cigarette brand “Lucky Strike” amongst the female demographic. As cigarettes where already popular through the male demographic Bernays had to convince women through a campaign that smoking cigarettes would help fight their equality and it was acceptable for them to smoke, as back then it was really only acceptable for males to smoke (Chakraborty 2014).

In March 1929 through the Easter Parade Bernays staged a dramatic public display which was part of his PR campaign. Bernays public display was of a lady by the name of Bertha Hunt stepping into the busy parade creating the scandal of her lighting a Lucky Strike cigarette. Before this had happened he had told the press to expect that the women would light up “tourches of freedom” during the parade to show they were equal to men. This then caused a media outburst creating the story titled, “Group of Girls Puff at Cigarettes as a Gesture of ‘Freedom’”. By doing this it helped women all over the country express their new found symbol of their freedom through smoking cigarettes and hence creating the start of the first successful PR campaign (Chakraborty 2014).

Image 1: Bertha Hunt in Parade

Source: Christensen (2012)

This is a clear sign of a PR Campaign as according to Wilcox et al. (2013) PR relies on a number of communication tools such as brochures, special events, new releases and feature stories, all of which Bernays achieved in his campaign.

I believe that there isn’t anything I wouldn’t use in a campaign that Bernays used, he used simple but effective tactics that would be suitable in today’s public relations campaigns and I’m sure they are being used. Bernays tactics helped create a movement both to benefit the cigarette company and the freedom of women.

Image 2: Campaign Poster

Source: Chakraborty (2014)

References

Chakraborty, R 2014, Torches of Freedom: How the world’s first PR campaign came to be, viewed 28 April 2015, http://yourstory.com/2014/08/torches-of-freedom/

Christensen, W 2012, Torches of Freedom: Women and Smoking Propaganda, viewed 28 April 2015, http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/02/27/torches-of-freedom-women-and-smoking-propaganda/

Wilcox, DL, Cameron, GT, Reber, BH & Shin, JH 2013, Think: Public Relations, Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.

Public Relations ‘Crisis’ – Module 9

A public relations crisis is generally a high profile unexpected event which is generally seen to have an adverse effect on the organisation which is generally followed by media and or government scrutiny (Wilcox et al. 2013).

Rolling stones magazine posted a story about an alleged gang rape on the campus of the University of Virginia. When published it caused an up roar in many ways as even though the report’s editors made judgements about attributions, fact-checking and verification, they had little or no concern for Jackie and her situation (Wilson 2015).

Image 1: Title of Report

Source: Coronel et al. (2015)

The Rolling Stone didn’t take this into action straight away, but after receiving the negative feedback to cope with this crisis the Managing Editor Will Dana made statements in regards to this, stating things like “every single person had the opportunity to pull the strings of this story hard and question things more deeply but that was not done”. In Coll’s investigative report Dana also made a three-paragraph editor’s note stating things like it was hard to read but is a fascinating document and did a formal apology to the readers and also to the fraternity (Wilson 2015).

Personally I think that this has hindered the Rolling Stones reputation as according to Lewton (2011) you should act immediately towards crisis’s and the fact this statement took 4 months to be released shows that the where trying to wait for this to blow over or that they didn’t really care and it was a very basic apology which they should do better. This is a major magazine which this crisis really came from basic errors that could have been avoided and their work should be impeccable and with crisis’s like this happening it really does diminish their reputation.

References

Coronel, S, Coll, S & Kravitz D 2015, Rolling Stone and UVA: The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Report, viewed 7 April 2015, http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/a-rape-on-campus-what-went-wrong-20150405

Lewton, K 2011, ‘Surviving a crisis with a transparent PR plan’, Public Relations Tactics, vol. 18, no. 7, p. 17.

Wilcox, DL, Cameron, GT, Reber, BH & Shin, JH 2013, Think: Public Relations, Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.

Wilson, M 2015, With UVA rape story retraction, Rolling Stone promises to do better, viewed 7 April 2015,  http://www.prdaily.com/crisiscommunications/Articles/18414.aspx

About

Hi everyone

Welcome to my blog for COMM11110 Introduction to Public Relations.

I’m currently studying a Bachelor of Business Majoring in Marketing and this my final term, yay.

I am currently living in Brisbane and studying externally, I decided to study externally as I’m originally from Rockhampton, Central Queensland and moved to Brisbane and for me to be able to live down here I needed to work more hours, so external studying suited my lifestyle.

I am currently working 30 hours a week and studying as well, but have learnt to be able to balance both and also have a good social life, as every University student needs.

I am looking forward to creating these blogs as I have never done one before so will be interesting and also am looking forward to reading other students as well.